October 1, 2006

Who speaks 10 times too fast to be audible? That's just nutty. But I want to believe Neil Armstrong really said “That’s one small step for a man," so I'm glad an Australian computer guy found evidence of the "a." Now, if somebody could figure out some halfway plausible method of establishing the absence of "ein" in President Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner," we could finally be free of the indefinite article problems of the 1960s.

24 comments:

The ein problem isn't really a problem. It's a german convention to leave out the indefinite article if you are indicating that you are amember of the group and to include the indefinite article if you are merely indicating likeness with that group.

But even though "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," doesn't really make sense, it is still iconic. I think it is because of the audio.

If there was no audio and you just read Neil Armstrong's first words on the Moon - whatever they were - I think you would think, "Eh. Okay, but not great." It's the audio - that creepy, cool audio - that makes them great.

I love the Berliner thing. Now when somebody trying to be smart tells me that story, I will tell them the truth and embarrass them and make them look dumb.

Not strictly "too fast to be audible". The average American English spoken syllable lasts 75 milliseconds, while the average French one takes 50 milliseconds. But that's average -- a syllable of a single short vowel is quite plausible to be spoken for a length of 35 milliseconds. That would be heard quite plainly spoken on Earth by someone in the same room.

But run it through the long chain of 1960s electronics used to transmit his voice from the suit through intermediaries to Earth, plus the distortion of the atmosphere and magnetosphere on the signal, and enough "noise" might well be introduced to muffle such a brief sound to the unaugmented human ear.

Well, I dunno...listening to the audio, it sounds like "that's wun smahl step...furr man..." I know that Americans tend to slur vowels into the preceding word, though, so it's possible that it was "...furra man..." and we're just confusing his article "a" with the end of his "r" sound.

I've often had trouble trying to enunciate when you have an ending vowel and a starting vowel together...it just tends to become one long "errufunnuthugnuttupusunuth".

As for the Berliner thing: If someone said that they were a Hamburger, we would not think that they seriously meant it as "I am a processed meat product made of ground beef formed into a patty". It would just be a funny way to say it.

On the Berliner is jelly donut, I never saw a Berliner sold as such when I was in Berlin nearly a deacde ago. The closest I ever found a Berliner to Berlin was in Luebeck (which is famous for being the home of marzipan - apparently there was this siege and the bakers ran out of flour, so they tried to bake break using almonds).

But during the Armin Meiwise case (the case of consensual cannibalism), the fact that the victim came from Berlin allowed Bild to run the whole sordid story under the headline "Cannibal devours Berliner".

George: Wow, I thought you were kidding. Why don't I remember that? It sounds so insane! But the place where he was really was called the Descartes Highland Plains, so he wasn't making an allusion to the philospher, and everyone's supposed to know the Br'er Rabbit story.

Mike, you heard them 'live' through a transmission from Armstrong's suit to the lander to the orbiter to a relay station to Houston to the networks to your local station to your receiver to your ears. All signal-degrading analog links. Ever made a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of an analog tape?

There are all sorts of sounds the human ear cannot hear, but which can be found in computer-assisted waveform analysis. The claim here is that there was sufficient distortion to render the "a" inaudible to the human ear, but that analysis by computer can pick up remaining traces to show it was there. Which means it's completely consistent with both Armstrong saying 'a' and you not hearing it 'live'.

Steven - I know about analog. I know about signal-to-noise ratio. There wasn't an increase in noise where the "a" should have been. There wasn't a pause where the "a" should have been (thus requiring the ridiculous "he said it really fast" theory). Go back and listen yourself. No "a". No way.